


these tornadoes are for you (or times she loved him back)

by inkspl0tches



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, i dont even know!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 15:28:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5211053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkspl0tches/pseuds/inkspl0tches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>if she says it, it will seep into his skin like a tattoo and she thinks he has enough scars, so she doesn’t say anything at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these tornadoes are for you (or times she loved him back)

“You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.”

― Richard Siken

 

> **i.**

“it isn’t that simple,” she tells him, because she’s a scientist and nothing ever is. “it’s about the wonder of it. the research possibilities are...are incredible, mulder.”

she pushes her glasses higher up on her nose and pulls her knees closer to her on the couch. there are miles of dark green leather between them and he imagines walking his fingers across it to tickle her t-shirt covered ribs. he thinks about touching her with hands that had pointed a gun at her only two weeks ago, that had held hers in a hospital room and tried to forget the rules of russian roulette.

“what’s so complicated about bringing some of the most dangerous predators in the world back to life and then thinking that would be a good amusement park idea? dinosaurs plus humans equals death. that’s a pretty straightforward equation, doc.”

she smirks and taps her pen thoughtfully against her lips. he’d relinquished the casefiles he’d been working on to the floor when spielberg’s classic came on, but scully had refused to give up the pretense of work. she’d doodled a sketchy dinosaur in the corner of the file though, and he’d pretended like he hadn’t noticed.

“you’re telling me you wouldn’t go to jurassic park if it existed?” she says carefully, like she knows she has him. her smile is painted blue in the television light.

“listen,” he says. “that is not the point.”

“you would go.”

“only because i’d want to tell them what a bad idea it was.”

“uh-huh,” she nods, draws out her words like a teasing teenager. “sure, mulder.” she goes back to her papers, self-satisfied.

he lunges for her then, plucking the pen right out of her hand and holding it out of her reach. she yelps and covers her mouth, embarrassed. her scowl is melodramatic under her glasses.

“don’t pretend you wouldn’t go with me, scully,” he says, quieter than he means to, and he must betray something in the sentiment because her face softens until she’s looking at him in a way he’ll think later he must have imagined.

“alright,” she agrees. “i would, but just because someone has to save your ass from the dilophosaurus.”

“they’re cute, scully!”

“they’re deadly. this is why you need me.”

he can’t think of anything to say to that so he nods his mute agreement, and passes her her pen. she whispers her thanks and when their fingers brush he does not think of russian roulette.  john william’s score swells and softens and she watches him instead of the television screen.

she falls asleep against the side of his couch, and even the t-rex doesn’t wake her. he moves to cover her with a blanket, careful not to touch her and she blinks open an eye.

“it over?” she slurs, swatting at her hair which has slipped out of its ponytail and spilled over her forehead. her glasses are crooked and her cheeks are red from sleep. “sorry i fell asleep.”

“it’s okay,” he says and she shows no sign of moving. her eyelids flutter again and he clears his throat.

“scully,” he starts. “would you really go to jurassic park with me?”

“sure,” she mutters, her eyes closed.

“why?”

she shrugs, her shoulders blanket-covered and small. “because i wouldn’t want you to be eaten.”

“because you love me?” he’s teasing now, pulling at the edge of the blanket to wake her up. as much as he’d like to let her -- this loose-limbed, sweet, slurring version of scully -- doze on his couch until morning, he knows she’d be buttoned up and straighter laced than ever tomorrow, knows she’d been embarrassed to have stayed.

“yeah, because i love you,” she says, like it’s obvious and she wishes he would stop pestering her now. she presses her face into the pillow at the end of the couch and sighs. “you’re my best friend. i don’t want the dinosaurs to get you.”

he is quiet, because there is nothing more to say. he lets her sleep until three am when she wakes up bleary-eyed and confused. she brushes her fingers across his cheek before leaving.

“sleep tight,” she tells him, smiles although he can’t see. “don’t let the dinosaurs bite.”

 

> **ii.**

hospitals echo. she can hear rapid fire instructions and laughter and tears bouncing off the walls like they’re coming from everywhere at once, like they exist outside of conventional notions of time and space. energy is never lost, it’s just redirected. she thinks anything she says in this room will linger here long after she is gone, will haunt the cracks of walls and burrow into the bedsheets.

mulder kisses her knuckles like she is holy in her slow, graceless unwinding. he touches her cheek and she can hardly feel the warmth.

i love you, he says without saying it because the walls have ears and her brother has eyes, and he is watching them from the doorway, breathing like he’s holding something back.

i love you, he says without saying it because they didn’t ever say it, and if he’d said it she would have cried or screamed or kissed him or hit him or all at once because she is dying, she is already dead, and what’s the use in loving something when it’s gone.

“i love you,” she mouths when he walks away. she holds his hand like a frayed rope in a tug-of-war, like a lifeline, it leaves burns on her palms when his fingers slip out of her grasp.

“i love you,” she mouths, but does not say aloud because hospitals echo and energy is not lost and this room will remember everything she says, but she wants him to forget.

if she says it, it will seep into his skin like a tattoo and she thinks he has enough scars, so she doesn’t say anything at all.

 

 

> **iii.**

and later, with rain drops holding relay races on his window and smudged moonlight dragging across his sheets, she decides to tell him. because she likes facts and explanation and this was a bit of both, this rationale, this conclusion she’d come to somewhere between daniel’s hospital room and mulder’s bed.

“mulder?”

he’s been blinking sleepily for a while now, shutting his eyes long enough to doze off for a moment and snapping them back open when he realizes she’s still looking at him. her gaze is a microscope, she’s scrutinizing him, has been for the last ten minutes. she thinks he probably feels trapped under glass, but he’s waited her out. she touches her fingertips to his temple. what a good experiment. what a good man.

“mm? you want me to tell you about crop circles or something, scully?” he’s drunk on fatigue, his words coming out slurred and sweet. jet-lag and the rain on the window are rocking him into oblivion. she has the urge to just let him sleep. he used to call her too early or too late and she knew he wouldn’t sleep without the television on. he’s better now, at sleeping, prone to trapping her against him on sunday mornings. she doesn’t like to think about what that means, about how she’s shifted his center of gravity, made him inclined to her toothbrush in his bathroom and sleeping on her shoulder. she does not think that they are temporary, but the scientist in her says that everything is. the physicist says that what comes up must come down. the doctor says that everything dies. the fbi agent says not to think about the magnitude, the sheer strength, of the things she’s seen that could separate them.

“no,” she says. “it’s okay. forget it.”

he shakes his head. “photographic memory, scully.”

not entirely true, she knows, but it sounds better than “i catch things in my mind and turn them over in my head like hard candy until i bite down and it breaks or gets lodged in the back of my throat” it sounds better than “i still remember how you looked with cancer connecting the dots in your brain” and “i can’t unsee my sister’s face.” photographic memory sounds better, sure, so she let’s it go.

“earlier --” she starts and pauses, traps her lip between sharp bottom teeth.

“how much earlier?” he prompts and smiles at her. she doesn’t return his smile, drops her eyes to her hands which is hard because it is entirely too dark in his room to see much of anything other than the quirk of his lips, the white of his teeth.

“with daniel. he wanted me to,” she hesitates, she’s recapping. he knows this already. “go back to him and i -- i said no because.” fullstop. there is a period in her voice and her high school english teacher would be wildly offended.

he waits, which he didn’t used to be good at, still isn’t good at, actually. he liked to finish her sentences, head on collisions between her words and his on a daily basis. he’s quiet now though. maybe it’s just because he’s tired.

she flicks her eyes back up to him. she’s shorter than he is, even in bed. they’re facing each other, but she’s using her arm as a pillow, eye level with his chest. she can feel his breath ruffle her hair.

“i can’t say this if you don’t quit looking at me,” she says, annoyed.

“do you want me to close my eyes?” he asks earnestly, chokes off a smile and she shrugs. he shuts his eyes obediently. she props herself up on on elbow and looks down at him. deep breath. she feels silly.

“i told daniel i couldn’t be with him because i...”

“dopamine, scully,” he says with his eyes still closed, a grin teasing his lips.

“what?”

“dopamine and serotonin,” he says.

“what the hell are you talking about?” she wrinkles her nose, stares at him. he still doesn’t open his eyes.

“C8H11NO2...” he starts to recite and she catches on suddenly, a step behind but still able to match his pace, as always.

“plus C10H12N2O,” she says with him and stops. it was a gag, a nerdy valentine’s day card. it was the chemical equation for love.

“you don’t know the rest, scully?” he sounds disappointed.

“i know the rest,” she says and kisses him instead of finishing it.

**  
**

 

> **iv.**

she used to try to make out her mother’s prayers at mass. she’d squint her eyes at maggie’s lipstick mouth and try to find the breaks in her quietly murmured ministrations. now she adopts her mother’s sunday church pose, bows her head over her partner’s body and speaks so quiet and fast that her words come out a raw, violent rush and none of them are prayers.

the ambulance is silent except for her muffled whispers. john and skinner and the dark haired, eclectic agent, monica, sit quietly against the other wall. the absence of a siren is not lost on her. it does not matter how long it takes them to get to wherever they’re going; they were already too late. scully’s hands grip mulder’s and they are ice. he used to tease her that her fingers were always cold. she laughs and it sounds like a sob.

“i’m sorry,” she’s saying, over and over again, because he’d always found her, every time. “i’m so sorry, mulder. i’m so sorry.”

she runs her fingers across his cheek, and a mottled rush of images slip and tumble through her exhausted mind. she catches on a memory. he is bruised and drugged up and she’d saved the world and he’d loved her. she hadn’t said it back, not then.

she says it now, until the words run together and sound foreign, feel heavy and tasteless on her tongue. i love you i love you i love you. the ambulance stops and she drops her head to his shoulder, closes her eyes and pretends it is summer again.

“dana,” monica says gently. her hand is warm on her shoulder as they step out of the ambulance. “i’m so sorry. i didn’t know.”

scully nods and crosses her arms. “yes, well, neither did he.”

she looks up at the sky then, to blink back tears and compose herself. she’s lying. he knew, but if she pretends he didn’t she thinks the universe might realize its mistake. she thinks someone, somewhere, might understand and give him back. they had unfinished business, the two of them. she holds his hand all the way to the mortuary.

 

> **v.**

they are writing a new language at her kitchen table. the baby monitor sits between them and william’s breathing gives rhythm to their work. the pax romana lasted 200 years, but their peace had been decidedly shorter and perhaps more deserved. she rests her cheek on her hand and quizzes him on the hidden meaning behind quips about the weather, on the way he was to phrase any emails he might send.

“so if i say ‘are you coming for dinner’ it means...” she prompts him, watching his face intently, like this was a test they could not afford to fail.

“have i found anything that you need to know about,” he says. “and if i say ‘raincheck?’ it means...”

“no, you haven’t found anything, obviously,” she replies, and she can’t help feeling silly, like she is trying to tie him to her with kite strings that will rip at the slightest breeze. she does not expect him to be able to call her. she does not know if she expects to see him ever again. part of her must, she thinks, because part of her loves him too deeply and tragically to let him go if she thought it was the end. part of her is still too naive to feel this much, part of her thinks dangerous, sharp-edged thoughts and pretends she doesn’t.

“it’s like we’re having an affair,” he jokes and smiles. this could be a game, scully, it could be fun. “your husband must be so jealous for us to go to all this trouble.”

“what’s to be jealous of,” she murmurs and curls her lips into a ragdoll smile. her eyes look button blue and just as lifeless.

an hour later she is yawning into her tea mug. he stands up from the table, offers her his hand. “let’s get some sleep,” he says, gentle like he is afraid of scaring her away.

“no,” she says and shakes her head, pulls her hand away from him. “we have to keep practicing these. sit down.”

“scully,” he starts and he isn’t sure how he’s going to finish.

she looks up at him and he tries to pretend he doesn’t see the tears in her eyes. if she cries it’ll all be over, if she cries he’ll never leave.

“i don’t want to go to sleep just yet,” she tells him and her voice is impossibly small, “please.”  she blinks and her eyes are sharp and blue again.

he nods and they sit on her couch until morning, a blanket wrapped around both of their shoulders. they speak only in whispers and half-sentences. she slumps against his shoulder and he holds her tighter. when the sun comes up it is red-gold against her skin and she presses her lips to his jaw, his temple.

“i love you,” she says, quietly, because they hadn’t come up with a codeword, not for that.

 

> **vi.**

she is beautiful and irate on sunday mornings, and she is missing the november sunrise.

“scully,” he tries for the tenth time, “you really have to come see this.”

there is a muffled response from the lump of blankets on the right side of their bed. he thinks some of it might be in german and none of it is friendly. it’s 6:50 and 31 degrees, but the sky is red and orange and pink and so he takes his life into his own hands and sweeps her up, blankets and all, because she really does have to see this.

she shouts from somewhere inside the comforters, but all he can make out is her hair and they’re downstairs and on the porch before she can wrestle her way out of his arms. he drops her gently on one their low wooden bench, points at the sky as she sweeps hair out of her eyes and glares at him.

“don’t look at me,” he says, smiling. “look at that sky.”

she turns her head and although she’s done it hundreds of times he will never not be captivated by the tilt of her jaw as she raises her eyes to the sky for him. “wow,” she breathes and her voice is a dragon puff of air in the cold morning.

“isn’t it fantastic?” he asks, and she smiles at him, rare and genuine and like she can’t help it.

“it is,” she agrees, and settles against him, still wrapped in their comforter. he reaches down next to him and grabs the thermos of coffee he’d left on the porch before going inside to get her. he passes it to her and she gasps in pure elation.

“coffee!” she exclaims. “god, i love you.”

it’s not clear if she’s talking to him or the thermos, but he tightens his arm around her anyways, smiles when she wrinkles her nose in disgust.

“you put so much sugar in it, mulder. it’s sacrilege.”

she drinks it anyways though, and when she kisses him she tastes sweet, like brown sugar and the sunrise.

 

> **vii.**

she collapses against their couch just shy of midnight. her dress is spilled milk white and pooling around her waist. she kicks off her shoes and settles into the suit jacket he’d draped over her shoulders after dinner.

he leans over the back of the couch and she tugs his tie until he is in danger of losing his balance. her eyes are closed, but she smiles at him anyways, sensing his precarious proximity.

“i’m going to make a cake,” he announces, still hovering just above her. her fingers twist his tie.

“mulder, it’s almost midnight. i don’t want to make a cake.”

“did i say you were making a cake? no. i said i was making a cake. you just stay here. i’ll wake you up when it’s done.” he leans ever dangerously closer to kiss her nose. she laughs and screws her eyes shut, tells him not to make a mess.

ninety-minutes later and he’s done the opposite of what she told him. he looks entirely dusted in snow, flour covering him from his tie to the edge of his pants. the cake sits proudly on their kitchen table when she wanders in, though, and she laughs when she sees him because she hasn’t stopped smiling since noon.

“looking good there, g-man,” she says from the doorway.

“right back atcha,” he tells her. she is barefoot in her white dress and his black jacket, her hair falling out of it’s subtle twist. she rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand.

“can we eat it?”

“it needs to cool down,” he says and offers her his hand. he’s had their old garage sale radio on low as he destroys their kitchen, elvis crackles through the speakers.

 _a slow dance is really just standing with rhythm_ , she’d told him once at 3 am as he’d relayed the horrors of his eighth grade dance to her over cooling coffee. it was february, and he’d been drawing smudged cartoons onto the fogged glass of the window they were pressed against; she’d been pretending she wasn’t smiling.

“do you remember that?” he asks now as she takes his hand.

“we had a lot of conversations in diners that i don’t remember, mulder.”

the light from the refrigerator and the fire in the living room provide just enough illumination for her to see him. the clock on the oven says 1:47 am and eleven hours ago she’d stood in front of him in the courthouse and agreed to marry him if he’d promise not to die on her again. he’d promised and she’d kissed him in front of skinner.

“i asked you to dance,” he starts, prompting her.

“and i said no,” she finishes and she does remember it, but mostly she remembers the taste of copper in the back of her throat and the red and white checked napkins that didn’t hide the smear of her blood.

he nods and pulls her closer. “make it up to me?”

she loves him then, for his steady hand and the hesitance under his smile. she loves him then, but she loves him all the time, and she has for years so it’s really not even worth noting.

“hi,” she says, looking up at him.

“hi,” he replies, smiles down at her as the crackle from the radio and the hum of the refrigerator blur together into a gentle white noise. under the static, elvis says something about fools rushing in and she almost rolls her eyes, but doesn’t.

“you said yes,” he notes.

“to the dance or to being your wife?”

“both.”

“are you glad?”

“yes. you have no idea.”

“me too.”

they’re both still dressed for church. scully’s dress is too white and his suit is too black. she presses against him and their shadows play against each others until the fabric turns a watercolor silver. she tilts her face up towards him and thinks of low slung clouds and suits that didn’t fit, thinks of dust on skylights and the color of endless asphalt roads and decides she doesn’t mind the grey.

it’s their first dance and it’s just standing with rhythm really, just their quiet kitchen at 2am and her bare feet on the cold tile and her cheek to his chest.

“i love you,” she says because it’s true. “i love you. i think i maybe always have.”

he loves her too, and his hand is warm at the small of her back. it’s easy, it’s familiar, it’s an old dance. it’s just like sailing. it’s just sea legs and starry eyes and the rock of the tide.

the cake gets cold. she closes her eyes against his chest and studies the rhythm of his heart beat until it’s more familiar than her own.

 

> **viii.**

“do you still love me?” he throws her a crescent moon smile across the table with the question and she breathes in a stiletto of a breath, sharp and dangerous.

“still?”

it’s a diner outside tennessee and it’s their fourth case back together. the neon lights from the “open” sign, the watery bitterness of the coffee and the slouch of their black coats in slick vinyl booths is familiar and aches like an ancient bruise. she hates that he has to ask.

“well,” he looks down at his coffee mug. “yeah, still.”

she pricks her palm with her manicured nails, curling her cool hand into a fist. once when she was eight she’d ridden her scooter down the sloping hill outside their san diego home. when she’d hit the end of the road she was moving so fast, the wind whipping back her hair, that she let herself fly without touching the brakes. later, when she limped back to her mother with a skinned knee and a wounded ego, her father had asked why she hadn’t just slowed down. she’d shrugged; it had never occurred to her to stop.

“of course i love you,” she whispers, looks at the formica tabletop instead of his eyes. “of course.”

he lets out a ragged breath and she feels the weight of her wedding ring heavy around her neck. “just checking,” he says and smiles that crooked smile.

she reaches for his hand on the way out of the diner, squeezes his fingers and thinks of celestial mechanics, gravity, the inevitable destruction of stars and inertia.

“scully, if you don’t,” he says when they get to the car, starts a sentence that will break her heart.

“shut up, mulder,” she tells him, because she does. because it had never occurred to her to stop.


End file.
